From a mezzotint, after the picture by Scheffer.
TALLEYRAND
(Under Louis XVIII.).
His temperate habits had spared his health and energy. In the later years he would rise about eleven, spend two or three hours in leisurely dressing and chatting to privileged visitors, take only one meal a day, and spend the evening—and far into the morning—in whist or billiards or conversation or writing. He had four head cooks, each the best in his department, but most observers agree that he ate sparingly, and at no time of his career sinned against his epicureanism by excessive drinking. A few glasses of choice Madeira sufficed him. He drank, or rather enjoyed, exquisite coffee, and loved to have sweet and subtle odours about him, and to move or sit amongst rare china or books and fine inlaid furniture. He never slept much. He maintained to the end of his days that his constitution took its rest while he was awake. His heart used to stand still, as it were, after every few beats, and he formed the theory that this was as beneficial as sleep.
Mme. Talleyrand had separated from him in 1815. The new regime would have points enough in his person to fix upon without being constantly reminded that he was that unutterable thing, “a married priest.” He made an arrangement by which she was to remain in England, and receive from him a pension of 60,000 francs a year. He corresponded with her for some time, but she gradually dropped out of his life. Once it was being laughingly told in Paris how she had come back in spite of her arrangement with him, and Louis incautiously asked him if this was true. “Yes, Sire,” he replied. “I also have had to have my 20th of March” (the date of the King’s flight from Napoleon). She died in Paris in 1835. Talleyrand made constant inquiries of her in the last illness.
The Duchess of Courland seems to pass out of his life after 1815. But her daughter, Dorothy, now Duchess of Dino, took her place, and they remained strongly attached until his death. She separated from her husband (his nephew), and lived with or near Talleyrand. As beautiful, charming, and accomplished as her mother, she brought great comfort to his later years. Her little daughter Pauline was another ray of sunshine in the last grey winter days.
Most of his time during the fourteen years of waiting for his next piece of work was spent at Valençay. Visitors from England were familiar with the large mansion with the broad Moorish towers, the round domes, and the gilt weathercocks, that broke on one at the head of the long chestnut avenue. Here, with a large park in which he could take his drives, he would retire for months together, and entertain large numbers of visitors from Paris or from England. It is worth noting that he was an exceptionally kind and generous master. A fine lady who saw a servant accidentally upset him in his bath-chair one day expressed a hope to a higher domestic that the Prince would get rid of him. “Monsieur is not a Russian prince,” was the reply. A good servant was well cared for by him long after his power of service was exhausted. It is necessary to urge these small points. So many people still fail to understand what epicureanism is.
In 1821 Royer-Collard the Puritan philosopher and Liberal statesman came to live within a few leagues of Valençay. Talleyrand at once decided to lay diplomatic siege to Chateaux Vieux and secure an interesting neighbour. The moralist is said to have been uneasy at Talleyrand’s proposal to visit him, and pleaded his wife’s illness and other excuses. Talleyrand drove over, nevertheless, with his graceful auxiliary, the Duchess. Chateaux Vieux was built on the summit of a slight hill, and was approached through a wild and rough country. “My dear sir,” said Talleyrand when he reached the house, “you present a rather austere aspect to visitors.” The Stoic was, however, disabused of his hearsay notion of Talleyrand, and became an intimate and cordial friend. Sainte-Beuve says that as Talleyrand was now in his eightieth year (he should have said seventieth), and virtue was still his côté faible, he wanted to strengthen it with the moralist and prepare for the later confessor. If we suppose that Talleyrand desired to avail himself for ordinary social purposes of a cultured neighbour it seems to meet the case.
He built a second country-house, at Rochecotte, on the Loire, about seven leagues from Saumur. Though he gave this mansion to the Duchess, it was his favourite residence. It was built on a verdant hill by the river, and the road led up through a fine garden, cut in the side of the hill, to the creeper-covered house. He had a large and rich library here also, and a beautiful collection of the art-treasures he loved to see about him. Japanese porcelain, Medici vases, Buhl cabinets, and other costly objects filled the rooms. Here, in later years, he often entertained the rising young men of France—Thiers, Villemain, De Broglie, &c.—as well as his older friends. But he saw the latter pass one by one into the silence, and he marked off their ages with a smile of satisfaction at his own health and vigour.
Paris was growing accustomed to regard him as a picturesque survival of the wonderful past. He has very little share in its active life during those long years. At first he persisted in discharging his nominal duties as Chamberlain, standing in silence behind the King’s chair at dinner, and so on. This was a dignity that Louis did not entirely appreciate. There is a story that he made many efforts to get rid of Talleyrand without success. After asking Talleyrand several times whether it was not true that he contemplated retiring to Valençay, and receiving bland assurances that it was not, he at last ventured to ask how far it was to Valençay. “I am not sure,” Talleyrand is described as saying; “but I should think it is as far again as from here to Ghent.” The story-teller says that Louis dropped no more hints on that subject. There is another Ghent story that is said to have annoyed Louis. A lady was complaining to Talleyrand that the King was not Royalist enough. “Why,” he said, “he was at Ghent, and is ready to go again.”
There are, as I said, only two interventions in public affairs during these fourteen years. In 1820 the Prince thought he was on the point of re-entering politics, and he projected a Ministry, but he was not invited to form one. The new Ministry introduced in the following year a law for the censorship of the press, and Talleyrand rose to oppose it in the House of Peers. He made a long and stirring appeal for the liberty of the press, which he described as “one of the essential instruments of representative government.” Boldly defending the better elements of the Revolution and the philosophers who prepared the way for it, he threatened the reactionaries with the force of public opinion. “Today,” he said, “it is not easy to deceive for long. There is someone who has more intelligence than Voltaire, more intelligence than Bonaparte, more than the Directors or any Minister, past, present, or to come—that is, everybody.” The feeling is unmistakeably sincere. Through the Napoleonic and Bourbonien phases he has returned substantially to the position of 1789. In 1800 he had smiled at Napoleon’s treatment of the press. Experience had brought him back to moderate democracy.